


Every Morning I Wake Up From A Dream of You Holding Me (Underwater)

by OstarsofheavenOgrassofgraves



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: After season 1, Angst, Blood and Injury, Caring Adora, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Not gory just surface wounds, One-Sided Attraction, Physical hurt/comfort, Pining, Post battle of Bright Moon, Scorptra, Stitches, catradora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28868460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OstarsofheavenOgrassofgraves/pseuds/OstarsofheavenOgrassofgraves
Summary: Adora always had that impulse, even when they were kids, to run up to the person in pain. To get that person to safety. More often than not, Catra was that person she ran to.Catra drops her arm from Adora’s shoulder and bunches her fists up to her chest—but she stops when she sees the patient look in Adora’s eyes. It’s not just patience, Catra thinks, but devotion. Here’s the golden child, crouched out in the acid rain, tending to the wounds of the most hated cadet.But she doesn’t feel hated. Not right now. Not with Adora waiting, arms outstretched, for permission to take care of her.-------Adora used to patch up Catra's wounds, but now she inflicts them.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Catra/Scorpia (She-Ra), Kyle/Rogelio (She-Ra)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	Every Morning I Wake Up From A Dream of You Holding Me (Underwater)

Everything hurts. 

She cautiously peeks one arm out from the cover of the platform above her, just enough to catch a few drops on her skin. She pulls back as if licked by a flame, tucking into herself as the stinging sensation flares immediately. She instinctively presses her hand to the cut down her forearm, digging her teeth into her bottom lip to distract herself from the caustic sear.

Catra can’t remember the last time acid rain had poured down on the Fright Zone. Maybe it had only been a year or two ago, maybe it had been when she was in the youth squadron. In any case, now is not the ideal time to get caught outside in a toxic storm.   
  
_Catra?_

She flinches at the memory. Hearing the incessant beep of a target locking onto her. Dodging the bot’s laser beam at the last fraction of a second. Pulling herself up onto the rafters by the tips of her claws. Losing her balance when a projectile flew within an inch of her ear and lodged itself in the ceiling just behind her head. Extending her arms out in front of her face as she crash-landed on the bot. Sliding into a heap on the floor as everyone’s laughter reverberated off the simulation room’s walls. Well, not everyone. 

_Catra, you’re hurt!_

With a grimace and a stifled whimper, Catra had stood up off the floor and limped to the exit without even looking at Adora. She had only turned back her head enough to yell, “Stay away from me!” 

_I’m going to look after you._

There’s mechanical whirring somewhere nearby—the sound is familiar, but out of place. Catra’s eyes dart around, trying to find the source. Nothing and no one is around. 

She watches the rainwater sluice off the sides of buildings until her vision loses focus. The world is a blur, devoid of any detail. Placing her forehead on her knee, Catra mumbles, “Congratulations, they stayed away from you.” 

The whirring stops suddenly, but the scuffling of boots and the opening of hatch doors takes its place amongst the patter and clang of water against metal. Catra still can’t tell where these noises are coming from, but there’s a rhythm to it. A comfort in it. Leaning her crumpled body against the pipe beside her, Catra figures sleeping through the storm is a better option than getting acid burns on the way to the infirmary. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tells her mind to block out all the looks of scorn from the senior cadets, all the taunts from her peers, and all the wicked insults from Shadow Weaver. The looping music of rainfall eventually drowns out even the worst echoes in her memory. Words silenced. Tormentors at a distance. She’s alone.

But not for long. 

Her feline ears first pick up on the stilted stride of someone awkwardly running through the downpour in boots too big for their feet. As the footsteps approach her hiding place, the figure gets caught in an automatic searchlight, casting a long shadow on the pockmarked concrete. Her hands instinctively rise to shield her face, not ready for further chastisement or punishment. Trembling on the ground, she silently berates herself for believing that no one would come look for her; of course the Horde would find her, if only to hold her up as an example of failure. 

“Catra, it’s me!” 

Catra lets out a yelp as she springs out of her ball onto all fours, her fur sticking up in fright. Putting any weight onto her limbs, especially her right arm, is excruciating. Looking up into Adora’s face causes her to drop into a seated position with a grunt. 

“What’re you doing here?” She scowls, gingerly crossing her arms around her knees. Even making this petulant gesture shoots a spike of pain through her wrist and forearm. 

Adora kneels down in front of her, placing a medical kit in between them. She shifts about in the senior cadet armor that she finagled; she and Rogelio are the only junior cadets tall enough to fit into these suits yet, but that doesn’t mean she’s allowed access to the armory closet, and that certainly doesn’t mean she’s accustomed to how bulky the chest plate is. “Making sure you’re okay,” she answers nonchalantly, popping the box open and settling in on the ground with a thud, “duh.” 

Catra squirms when she eyes the items inside the kit—the gleam of shears, the point of a scalpel, the packet of gauze—and scoots as far back into the shadows as possible. “I _do not_ like where this is going.” 

Adora rolls her eyes as she uncaps a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “And _I_ don’t like the look of your arm. You’re going to need stitches.” 

Catra shivers, a hiss rising in her throat. “No, no no, uh uh, I am not going to the infirmary, I don’t—”

“Don’t want to deal with Shadow Weaver?” Adora sighs, dabbing a cotton towelette to the mouth of the isopropanol bottle. “I know. Now hold still—this is going to sting.” 

No matter how gently Adora applies the disinfectant to the open wound, Catra can’t help but to wince and bare her fangs. Adora is agonizingly methodical, using tweezers to clear the slice in Catra’s skin of tufts of fur and bits of shrapnel. Catra can’t handle looking at the cut itself, so she watches Adora. If she weren’t in so much pain, she would be laughing at her best friend’s face. Whenever Adora concentrates on any physical task, she tends to stick the tip of her tongue out between her lips. The ridiculous look of concentration. Of care. Catra catches herself staring at those lips and ashamedly stares down at cracks in the ground. 

“Could you go any faster?”

Adora doesn’t take her eyes off her work for a second, but her nostrils flare as if she wants to laugh at Catra’s impatience. “No, shut up.” 

“I only asked one question!”

“Shut up.”

The cleaning continues until Adora releases a shuddering exhale. Catra had been too caught up trying to find patterns in the concrete to realize that Adora had been holding her breath. She wonders if she could lay her head on Adora’s chest, like when they were little, and count the beats. Are both their hearts racing right now? 

“Okay,” Adora says with trepidation, picking up a needle between her thumb and forefinger, “I’m going to need you to trust me on this.”

Adora is the _only_ person Catra trusts—in the entire world—but she doesn’t like the look of that needle. “What are you going to do with that?” 

Adora digs around in the kit with her free hand, setting aside each tool she needs in the box lid. “That cut is long and deep,” she answers, starting to sterilize a pair of scissors and forceps, “and if you don’t get it stitched up now, it could be infected by the time you actually go to the clinic.” 

Catra starts to shake her head vehemently as soon as she catches on. “Adora, you are not going to stick that needle in me!”

Adora pauses and peers deep into her eyes. “So you’re going to get help?” 

“No!” Catra spits. 

Adora shrugs off the top part of the armor and lets it clunk to the ground. “Well, that settles it then. I’m going to suture your arm.”

“Adora, I—” 

Her protests cease when Adora lifts her hurt arm to balance her hand on Adora’s shoulder, right where the neck meets the torso. The heat of Adora’s skin warms her fingers. 

“Sorry, this’ll just give me a better view.”

Catra wants to tell her not to apologize, but she resists. Tearing open a small foil packet with her teeth, Adora dollops an ointment around the wound and rubs it into the torn skin with a cotton swab. “This should numb the area,” Adora explains, but Catra already isn’t paying attention to the feeling in her arm—or the ache in her joints, or even the bruises on her face. All she can think about is what it would be like to raise her hand a few inches to cup Adora’s chin. 

Adora finishes pulling on two black nitrile gloves. “Hey Catra?” 

Catra’s ears perk up instantly, torn from her reverie. “Yea—” but she doesn’t get the word out before Adora sinks her teeth into Catra’s neck. 

The bite is over as soon as it began, but Catra sputters about it for nearly a minute. “ _What_? Adora, wh—why’d you just BITE my neck? You really just did that! You bit my neck? You BIT my NECK!” Her face is outrageously hot; she has the desperate urge to shove a paper bag over her head and cover her furious blush. 

After a few cycles of Catra’s nonsense, Adora finally responds without looking up. “Yup, and it totally distracted you from when I put the needle in.” 

Catra huffs indignantly, but Adora’s ploy was a complete success; the suture is halfway done by the time Catra’s heart rate returns to (somewhat) normal, and she hadn’t even noticed a thing.   
  
But now she needs another distraction—from the desire to lay down and let Adora bite her neck again. 

“When’d you learn how to do this?”

Adora carefully grasps the needle with her forceps as she pulls the thread through, still poking her tongue out. “I took that emergency med rotation when you took hand-to-hand combat a second time,” she pauses as she transfers the suture to her left hand and the needle holder to her right, “and Kyle was actually a really good partner.”

Catra’s eyes widen in bewilderment. “Kyle was good at emergency med? Kyle’s good at something?” 

Adora gives a brief nod while completing the knot tie. Catra notices a small smile on Adora’s lips, her blue eyes examining and appreciating her handiwork. “Yeah, he’s good…” Adora trails off as she cuts the thread and finishes the job, “at getting injured, I should say. He was a really good partner because he was really, _really_ good at getting injured. I got to practice wrapping his sprained ankles, like, six times.” 

Catra giggles remembering how Kyle had nearly given himself a concussion just two weeks ago when everyone in their squadron had been playing trash ball in the barracks. Kyle had managed to kick the ball into the wastebasket from across the room, but in his excitement, he ended up running face first into the pole of a bunk. While the rest of the team had fallen apart in side-splitting laughter, Adora had actually propped Kyle back up on his feet and kept asking him simple questions as she walked him to the clinic, Rogelio eventually trailing behind them. Adora always had that impulse, even when they were kids, to run up to the person in pain. To get that person to safety. More often than not, Catra was that person she ran to. 

Adora sets the wound dressing in place with medical tape, but she’s not done. Catra gives a quizzical look when she sees Adora holding cotton wipes in one hand and antiseptic cream in the other. “You’ve got more cuts and scrapes on your face. Don’t worry, I don’t think any of them need to be sutured up.” 

Catra drops her arm from Adora’s shoulder and bunches her fists up to her chest—but she stops when she sees the patient look in Adora’s eyes. It’s not just patience, Catra thinks, but devotion. Here’s the golden child, crouched out in the acid rain, tending to the wounds of the most hated cadet. 

But she doesn’t feel hated. Not right now. Not with Adora waiting, arms outstretched, for permission to take care of her. 

“Please?” 

Catra drops her fists and lets Adora move in closer, pressing the cotton tenderly to the cut along the edge of Catra’s cheekbone. Every move Adora makes is measured and deliberate. Catra feels her lip quivering in spite of herself.

Adora notices. “Does this hurt?”   
  
“No!” Catra practically shouts, then regains control of her voice. “No, it doesn’t hurt.” Not physically, anyway. 

“How about this?” Adora applies the slightest amount of pressure to the cut between Catra’s nose and her upper lip. 

Catra goes cross-eyed from trying to watch Adora’s hand touch her face, graze her lips. “Uh, no… that doesn’t hurt.” 

Adora snorts when she glances up. “Don’t do that, goober, your eyes might get stuck.” 

“Did you just call me a ‘goober’?” Catra involuntarily pulls her head away from Adora’s reach, shaking her head in disbelief. “What are you, nine?” 

In feigned exasperation, Adora rests a hand on her hip and holds the other hand out, the cloth-draped palm waiting expectantly for Catra’s face to return to it. Blushing again, no matter how hard she wishes to the contrary, Catra repositions herself and leans into Adora’s touch. 

Her eyelids fall closed. The distant sounds return, this time accompanied by incomprehensible commands in hushed tones and whispers through hallways. She doesn’t care who’s speaking or what they’re saying. She’s content knowing that she and Adora are out here together, away from it all. 

The rain is still falling by the time Adora has placed the last bandages across key points on Catra’s forehead and cheeks. She suspects Catra might have more injuries on her back and legs, but she doesn’t want to disturb the sleeping girl. She doesn’t know that Catra’s still awake; she wouldn’t suspect as much, given how Catra is purring right now like she does when curled up in slumber at Adora’s feet. 

Adora neatly packs up the kit as quietly as she can, but the sound of the box’s clasp is enough to make Catra’s ears twitch. 

“Can we stay out here,” Catra whispers into the night, scared to hear her own voice and scared to hear Adora’s answer, “just until the rain lets up?” 

Adora crawls to Catra’s side and takes a seat, snugly wrapping her arm around her. Catra immediately nestles in. “Of course.” She laughs a little, absent-mindedly petting Catra’s mane with her free hand. “Don’t want you to get any acid burns on top of the injuries you already have.” 

Catra senses her mind slowing down, growing hazy under Adora’s calming touch. “And I don’t want to leave your side,” she thinks to herself.

Before she loses consciousness, Catra’s fingertips lazily search for a mark on her neck. She smiles into the crook of Adora’s arms, wishing—and admonishing herself for wishing—that there will be a hickey over her pulse point in the morning. Among all the other slashes and bumps over her body, one lone bruise below her chin won’t stick out, but she’ll know its origin story. 

An hour or so passes. Though clouds hang in the sky, the rain has subsided. She has left the hard ground, but Adora’s arms are still around her—cradling her on the way to the barracks.   
  
“Wait,” she wants to cry out. Urgently. Desperately. 

Adora senses Catra stir and lifts her friend’s small form higher, closer to her body. She murmurs assurances. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. We’re just going back to the bunks.”

“We don’t have to go back, do we?” The question lingers in her brain, like a fog bank settling in a valley. “We could run away,” her thoughts ring. The fog grows denser, darker. 

“We could run away together, couldn’t we?” The question never passes her lips. 

  
“Catra?” 

  
The fog dissipates, revealing the gray-green walls of a force captain’s bedroom. Catra doesn’t remember ever going to bed. She must have passed out in the tank heading back from Bright Moon. 

Catra rolls uncomfortably from her side to her back, only to find a pair of eyes gazing down at her. 

“You’re awake!”

Catra screams and tries to throw off the blanket covering her, but she’s been tucked in so tightly she might as well be swaddled. Through gritted teeth, she growls, “Scorpia, get this _off me_!” 

“Sorry, Wild Cat, sorry!” 

Within seconds, she’s free. She jumps off the bed, teetering dangerously to her left side upon landing. 

“Whoa there, Catra, you better be careful!” Scorpia already has her pincers out for support, but Catra steps back into the bedside table and steadies herself by gripping its edge. “Those princesses hit you hard, you should really rest up!”

Standing up fully, Catra can already feel the soreness in her muscles, the fiery ache that starts in her back and spreads out into every limb. 

With tears threatening to well up in her eyes, Catra traces a finger down her right forearm. After a little more than a year, the scar’s still there. So’s the memory of how she got it. 

So’s the memory of how it was patched up. 

Knowing it was all a dream makes Catra want to scream. Knowing the dream had been a real day makes her want to sob. She settles for flopping back down on the bed and shoving her face into a pillow. 

“Is there, uh… anything I can get you? I could carry you to the infirmary, if you nee—”

Catra’s hackles rise. “Space. Distance. Privacy. That’s what you can get me, Scorpia.”

Scorpia hops off the bed with a start, nervously smoothing out the sheets. “Right, right, I can do that—”

“Now!”

“Of course, you got it,” Scorpia responds in her rush to the door, “anything for you, Catra!” 

Even with her face buried in the pillow, Catra swivels her ears back to detect Scorpia still standing in the doorway. Catra waits one minute, then another, for Scorpia to leave her alone. 

Then she hears it. 

“Don’t worry, Catra. I’ve got you.” 

Scorpia walks out into the corridor without another word. 

Moments of warfare flicker behind Catra’s eyelids. A rising wave. A tightening vine. The glint of a sword. 

“Congratulations,” Catra groans into the pillow, “you lost the battle and everyone hates you.” Even the girl who used to tend to your wounds, not cause them. 

Catra flips onto her back and stares at the ceiling, letting the agony swell and consume her. Then she glances at the doorway with regret simmering in her chest.

“Well, not everyone.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this piece!
> 
> I've latched onto this idea that Adora took care of Catra when they were growing up--and as much as Scorpia wanted to fulfill that role, Catra didn't want anyone else to tend to her pain. 
> 
> I learned how to suture as a teenager, but I admittedly haven't done it in awhile. Rest assured that Adora is not putting Catra at risk by applying the suture herself; this is a skill you can learn in anything from anatomy classes to wilderness survival workshops, so I'm sure the Horde would offer a course with suturing and other basic emergency first aid in the curriculum.


End file.
